KIEV, June 5. /TASS/. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has insisted on deploying the United Nations peacekeepers along the border with Russia.

"We are trying to do utmost to attract the representatives of the [UN] security missions to protect Ukraine against the aggression of Russia, including along the uncontrolled part of the Ukrainian-Russian border," he told a press conference in Kiev.

Poroshenko reminded that in May UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited Kiev and the sides agreed that a UN support office would be opened in Ukraine to study the options for deploying peacekeepers under the UN auspices. "We will make every effort to advance this issue," he stressed.

The United Nations Secretariat has not so far confirmed plans to open a UN office in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, on Thursday passed a law allowing foreign armed forces to support "peace and security in the country." The document is to serve as grounds for carrying out a peacekeeping operation on Ukraine’s territory based on the UN or the EU decisions as part of providing the country’s with aid.

A Russian lawmaker on Thursday reacted to the move saying the new law contradicts the Minsk agreements, even if peacekeepers were deployed by a decision of the UN or EU.

Poroshenko said earlier Ukraine had the right to turn to the UN Security Council with the request for deploying peacekeepers in an effort to establish peace in the country.

The issue of a possible deployment of international peacekeepers to eastern Ukraine is often discussed during the contacts of Ukraine’s authorities with the UN Secretariat.

The UN chief told Poroshenko in a phone conversation on April 20 that the decision on sending peacekeepers to Donbas could be taken only by the UN Security Council. Diplomats say however Kiev has not yet sent an official request to the Security Council to consider the proposal of the UN presence in the conflict zone.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov earlier that Kiev’s initiative on peacekeepers was aimed at splitting the country into two parts. Moscow would not vote in the UN Security Council on the deployment of UN peacekeepers to Ukraine, he earlier said.